Sheepshaver running Mac OS 9 on Mac OS X v10.5 |
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| Developer(s) | Christian Bauer, Gwenole Beauchesne |
| Stable release | 2.3pre / May 14, 2006 |
| Operating system | Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, BeOS |
| Type | Emulation |
| License | GPL (Free Software) |
| Website | sheepshaver.cebix.net |
SheepShaver is an open source PowerPC Apple Macintosh emulator originally designed for BeOS and Linux. The name is a play on ShapeShifter, a Macintosh II emulator for AmigaOS (made obsolete by Basilisk II), which is in turn not to be confused with a third-party preference pane for Mac OS X with the same name. The ShapeShifter and SheepShaver projects were originally conceived and programmed by Christian Bauer. However, the main developer behind SheepShaver, of late, has been Gwenolé Beauchesne.
SheepShaver was originally commercial software when first released in 1998, but after the demise of Be Inc., the maker of BeOS, it became open source in 2002. It can be run on both PowerPC and x86 systems; however, it runs more slowly on an x86 system than on a PowerPC system, due to the translation between the PowerPC and Intel x86 instruction sets.
SheepShaver has also been ported to Microsoft Windows.
It is capable of running Mac OS 7.5.2 through 9.0.4 (though it needs the image of an Old World ROM to run Mac OS 8.1 or below), and can be run inside a window so that the user can run classic Mac OS applications and BeOS or Linux or Windows applications at the same time.
Although SheepShaver does have Ethernet support and CD-quality sound output, SheepShaver does not emulate the memory management unit. While adding MMU emulation has been discussed, the feature has not been added due to the effort required in implementing it, the impact on performance it will have and the lack of time on the part of the developers.